Blackberry Crumble (5 page)

“Jane Seeley,” she growled, stabbing her spoon into the half-empty container of cookie dough and scooping out a huge bite. She shoved the whole spoonful into her mouth and chewed it up, the sugar gritty between her teeth even as the blueberries both sweetened and soured the overall taste. What she wouldn’t give to be in a room with Jane Seeley right now.

The sugar rush kept her up until two o’clock; but the closer Saturday morning came, the more her weekend to-do list began dominating her thoughts. She had to go grocery shopping, and clean the carpets, and get her tires rotated. Finally, she did her yoga breathing and meditation until she felt her body began to relax. Then she climbed into bed and hoped that morning wouldn’t come for a very long time.

The next thing she knew, it was bright outside her window. Rather than popping out of bed, however, she pulled the blankets back up to her chin and rolled over. It was 8:46, and she needed to build herself up before she could imagine going into the world and facing the same looks she’d encountered at the dinner.

The anger had given her some oomph last night, but had faded in the morning sun. Nine o’clock came and went; Sadie couldn’t remember the last time she’d stayed in bed past nine. Even when she had the flu she puttered around the house. At 9:10 she got a text from Gayle, asking if she was okay.

She ignored it.

Breanna had texted as well, asking if Sadie was okay and lamenting that she was on the other side of the world. Sadie assured her daughter that she was fine, even though she’d give just about anything to have Breanna come home for the weekend. Shawn, who knew Jane almost as well as Sadie did, called her a bad name in his text, and Sadie had to chastise him for it—via text, of course; she didn’t want to talk to anyone yet.

At ten she finally got up and showered, not bothering to do her hair. She simply towel dried it and brushed it away from her face. A hint of gray was showing at the roots, meaning she needed to make an appointment to get her burnished brown with natural-looking highlights redone, but even that simple errand felt overwhelming. Going to a salon full of people who might believe those things from the article—she didn’t think she’d survive it. Maybe it was time to follow Paula Deen and embrace going silver.

As she climbed back into bed, it did not escape her notice that after hours and hours of lying around, waiting for a plan to come to mind, she still had no idea what to do.

Around noon, someone knocked at her door. She imagined a hulking reporter with hungry eyes thrusting a microphone into her face. “Why did you lie to your entire community about your trip to Florida? Don’t you think they deserve to know the truth? What else have you been hiding from your unsuspecting neighbors? Are you really dating a Garrison police detective? What does he think about the other man in your life?”

Her mind went back to the article as she closed her eyes and snuggled further down into the blankets, grateful that it was illegal for reporters to break into her house and wishing, again, that everything would just go away. Far, far away. A second knock sounded, and she wrapped the pillow around her head. Even when the knocking stopped she didn’t unwrap the pillow from her ears, wishing she could fall asleep and wake up when this was all over.

“Sadie.”

Sadie jolted and her eyes flew open. Gayle stood at the foot of her bed, looking at her with concern.

Relieved it wasn’t Barbara Walters, but wishing she hadn’t told Gayle where she hid the spare key, Sadie forced a smile. “I’m okay,” she said, hoping she sounded casual. “I . . . I’ve been up all day cleaning and just laid down for a nap.”

“Right,” Gayle said, putting her hands on her hips and cocking her head to the side. “That’s why there are dishes in the sink.”

Sadie squinted at her, not ready to be rescued. Gayle wore her hair short and had just enough natural curl to keep it full and hip-looking. Her hair was as red as ever—not fake red, but a color that was actually believable—and it made Sadie think of May Sanderson, the redhead who had first brought the article to Sadie’s attention.

“I’m fine,” Sadie said, waving one hand through the air. “I’m just . . . tired.”

“Pete’s here,” Gayle said.

Sadie pushed herself up and began smoothing her hair, which was still damp in some places from the shower. She was sure it looked atrocious. “Oh, please tell me you’re kidding,” she whined. “I don’t want him to see me like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like this,” Sadie said, annoyed that Gayle was being difficult. “Undone.”

“We’re worried about you,” she said as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

Sadie fiddled with the satin trim of her bedspread while avoiding Gayle’s eyes.

“It’s a stupid article written by a woman who makes a menace of herself,” Gayle continued. “It’s not worthy of this kind of unraveling.”

“You don’t understand,” Sadie said, giving up the pretense that she was all right. She leaned back against the headboard and held her pillow in her lap. “She attacked every part of me. She made me sound like a hussy and a criminal. No one has ever said things like that about me.”

“Then you were due, sweetie,” Gayle said, her tone soft as she squeezed Sadie’s leg beneath the blankets. “We all have our moments, and after the last several months, didn’t it ever cross your mind that someone somewhere just might try to capitalize on it?”

Sadie hadn’t thought about it that way, but it didn’t make her feel any better. The memory of people whispering about her and summarizing her character still hurt, and she shriveled away from it all over again. Then she thought of Jane, and her stomach started to burn.

Gayle continued. “You’re Sadie Hoffmiller, and people love you, even if they have a momentary lapse of judgment. The best way to convince them that Jane Seeley is a rat-faced, self-serving, manipulating tramp is to be the Sadie this town knows and loves, not the one Jane Seeley is trying to sell.”

She made it sound so easy.

“And Pete’s still here,” Gayle said, reminding Sadie of that fact.

“But my hair,” Sadie whined, raising her hands to her hair again, which had dried into a horrendous state of hills and valleys. “Can you tell him I’ll call him later? I really don’t want to see him.”

“He wants to see
you,
” Gayle said, a different softness to her voice that caused Sadie to look up at her. The look they shared filled in the blanks left behind by Gayle’s tone, and Sadie was reminded that at one point her friend had been interested in Pete. Sadie had given her blessing for Gayle to date Pete before quickly realizing that had been a mistake. Gayle hadn’t gotten upset when Sadie had renewed her relationship with Pete, but Sadie knew she still had a soft spot for him. Luckily, it wasn’t nearly as big as the soft spot she had for Sadie. Remembering how easily Gayle had accepted Sadie and Pete being together again caused any other arguments to fizzle in her throat. After all of that, Gayle was here, pulling Sadie out of the mire. Surely Sadie owed her a little compliance.

“You’ve got two minutes,” Gayle said, patting Sadie’s ankle and shooting her a look that communicated her expectation for Sadie to follow her instructions. She stood up and left the room, clicking the door closed behind her.

Sadie sat there for nearly a minute before finally getting out of bed, accepting her fate. She changed into the white-and-pink, polka-dotted pajamas her daughter Breanna had sent her for this last Mother’s Day. They were silky and lightweight. Sadie didn’t wear them very often because she was afraid she would spill something on them. But she wanted to present two things to Pete and Gayle, and the pajamas would help her do that. First, that she was okay; and second, that she wasn’t leaving the house yet. She did hurry to the bathroom to spritz and gel her hair, using her fingers to tease it into some semblance of style. She still looked awful, but at least she didn’t look like a drowned rat anymore.

Pete and Gayle both stood up from where they’d been sitting around the table when Sadie entered the kitchen, feeling foolish and conspicuous in her cheery jammies. Pete pulled out a chair next to him and waved her toward it. She sat and Gayle pushed a bowl her direction. Sadie’s stomach rumbled as she looked into the bowl before looking up at her friend.

“You made me potato salad?” Sadie said, her voice soft with gratitude. Gayle made the best potato salad in Garrison, and she knew Sadie loved it.

“The ultimate comfort food,” Gayle said. “Well, at least when it isn’t soup weather.”

Sadie had Gayle’s recipe in her Little Black Recipe Book, but she only made it for family events, not wanting to take credit for it around town. “Thank you,” she whispered before taking her first bite and savoring the perfection of texture, taste, and good old carbohydrates.

“So,” Pete said after Sadie had eaten most of the potato salad, “how are you doing?”

“Umm, can we start with something else?” Sadie asked, using the spoon to scoop up a final bite.

“No,” Gayle said. “Your behavior isn’t healthy.”

“I know,” Sadie said. “But I need a little time to pull myself together.”

“That’s called wallowing,” Gayle said. “And it’s the worst thing you could be doing right now. Hiding out only gives credibility to the things Jane wrote. You’ve got to get out there and prove she was wrong.”

“She’s not wrong,” Sadie mumbled, painfully aware of Pete’s presence next to her. While part of her wished he wasn’t there, maybe it was better that he was. Sadie took a breath. “I mean, yes, she’s exaggerating some parts, of course, but I did go to Florida in part because I was . . . curious about my feelings toward Eric. And I did lie about visiting my roommate. And I did withhold information from the police and—”

“Solve the case,” Pete finished.

Sadie was so surprised to hear him not only speak, but speak defensively, that she couldn’t come up with a reply.

Pete continued. “Jane Seeley obviously got ahold of someone who gave her bits and pieces of the story, and she glued them together any way she wanted to.”

Sadie looked at him. “You believe that?”

“Of course I do,” Pete said, holding her eyes. “It would be really nice if you’d give me a little more credit. I said I needed some time to process it, and then you disappear while I’m defending you to the people at the dinner.”

“But you were so mad.”

“I was
upset
—not mad, upset. You would have been too if there had been an article like that about me, twisting my words and actions the way Jane did yours.”

Sadie felt tears in her eyes. “Really?” she whispered. He smiled and reached for her hand, making her question her earlier doubts. Maybe they weren’t so far off track as she thought.

“So, anyway,” Gayle cut in. “What are you going to do now?”

Sadie reveled in Pete’s warm hand wrapped around hers and lifted her other hand to wipe at her eyes. She looked at Gayle sitting across the table and sniffed slightly. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. She meant it when she said she’d never faced anything like this. She’d never had to find a way to defend herself to an entire state full of people.

They started brainstorming. Gayle suggested a letter to the editor of the paper, and Pete said she had grounds to request a retraction, but they all agreed that a few sentences buried in Monday’s paper wouldn’t do much. And it didn’t solve the problem of Sadie being unable to explain a lot of the details associated with the case. They all agreed that was a definite roadblock.

“Maybe it will just go away,” Gayle said after it felt like they’d exhausted all their possibilities.

“Maybe we just have to find a way to live with it,” Pete countered. “It’s not that bad. I mean, it was in Friday’s paper, for heaven’s sake. Everyone knows that’s the least-read paper of the week, and it was on the second page.”

Sadie knew that was true, but she also knew that it only took a few people reading the article to start the story going, and in a small town like Garrison, where the next biggest news was rezoning the agriculture space on the north end of town, it was just too tempting not to repeat.

Gayle’s cell phone rang, and she excused herself from the table before putting it to her ear.

“Sadie?” Pete said, squeezing her hand.

She loved the sound of her name on his lips. She looked up at him, feeling sheepish, and attempted a smile.

“You’re a good person,” Pete said. Sadie fidgeted with her spoon. He reached over and touched her chin, causing her to look up at him. “You are a
good
person.”

Sadie felt tears come to her eyes again, wishing she didn’t need to hear that right now. But she
did
need to hear it, especially from him. If Pete could believe her and support her through this, then surely she could believe in herself. Right?

The moment was interrupted by the unexpected sound of the television.

Sadie and Pete turned toward the TV in the living room. Gayle stood in front of it, blocking Sadie’s view, the phone still to her ear. She shook her head. “I better go,” she said into the phone, looking over at Sadie as she lowered the phone and turned it off.